Second Brigadier General Majid Shoja, police chief of South Khorasan province, revealed the news on Sunday. He said that intelligence operations of the police had shown that the gang was transferring illicit drugs to Semnan province. After coordinating with Semnan police headquarters, the gang’s pickup truck was stopped in Shahroud during a surprise operation, he said.
He went on to say that 740kg opium and three AK47 weapons were seized from the gang. The drug lord, he continued, along with two other members of the gang were also arrested in the operation, he said.
Iran, which has a 900-kilometer common border with Afghanistan, has been used as the main conduit for smuggling Afghan drugs to narcotics kingpins in Europe.
Despite high economic and human costs, the Islamic Republic has been actively fighting drug-trafficking over the past decades.
The country has spent more than $700 million on sealing its borders and preventing the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab and Central Asian countries.
The war on drug trade originating from Afghanistan has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian police officers over the past four decades.
Photo: Burning 30 tons of seized non-pharmaceutical illicit drugs in Shiraz, Feb. 2020
MNA/ 4904343
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